


File 01: The Marigold Plantation

by MistressEast



Series: First Order Investigations [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ...blueprints? kids like those right?, AU, Ghosts, Happy Halloween!, Hux is a walking disaster please help him, M/M, Paranormal Investigators, Phasma is the best, Slavery mention, Slow Burn, death mention, ghostly nonsense, gosh i hope i'm doing this right, i can't believe i'm finally posting this holy shit its been 84 years, just in time for halloween!, medium!Kylo, our boys do not like each other but it's complicated, technically pre-slash, the finalizer is super cool rv just go with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:19:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressEast/pseuds/MistressEast
Summary: Hux and Phasma have been running First Order Investigations since high school, and Dr. Snoke's metaphysical research graduate program seemed like the perfect opportunity to pursue their interests under the protective umbrella of academia. Unfortunately, that meant allowing Snoke's personal project, a taciturn medium named Kylo Ren, to join their team. Hux and Kylo mix like oil and water, or, more accurately, like fire and gasoline, and Hux is convinced that working effectively with Kylo is absolutely impossible. They hate each other, and Hux is content to leave it that way.
But then, a case in the sweltering heat of South Carolina begins to change things between them, and Hux finds himself questioning not only Kylo's feelings, but his own as well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Gosh, this is so exciting. This is the first fanfiction I've actually posted online for other people to see so I'm super nervous. I'm glad I got this done in time for Halloween (especially since I've been working on it for the better part of six months). Hopefully it's spooky enough for the occasion. 
> 
> This is the first part in a planned longer series, but what I do with it will largely be dependent on reader response. So, if you're so inclined, please comment and let me know how you liked it!
> 
> Please forgive any errors; I have an English degree and I work as an editor, but editing your own work is always tricky, and this my first time using AO3. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Edit: I'm changing my titling system because as much as I love being sentimental and poetic, I just couldn't justify the song lyric titles. The title is the only thing I've changed.

Armitage Alexis Hux is a rational person.

He reminds himself of this undisputable fact as he watches Kylo Ren, the world's most dramatic medium, stalk out of the room, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the windows in their ancient frames, the warped walls creaking in protest. He looks back at the shock-slack face of the house's current owner and, because he is a rational person, offers her a polite smile.

"Excuse me for one moment," he says rationally before turning and following his team member, taking care to open and close the door gently like a rational person.

Ren is easy to find, fuming on the lawn, muttering to himself like a completely non-rational person, which describes his entire persona pretty well. He doesn't look up when Hux strides rationally from the house, down the dilapidated steps to confront him in the overgrown grass.

"What the fuck was that!" Hux screams, still rational, still completely rational.

Ren does look up at that and Hux is immediately irritated by his furious expression. Honestly, mediums.

"That-that woman," Ren spits, running a hand through his ridiculous hair, "has no idea about anything, god damn it--!"

"That doesn't mean you can call her a fucking cunt, Ren!" Hux resists the urge to tear at his own hair in frustration because that would be highly _irrational_ and Hux is _not_ irrational-- "What the hell has gotten into you!?" 

Ren looks past him to fix his attention on the huge, twisted structure of what once was the Marigold Plantation. "This place is fucking cursed," he says, voice slightly quieter now but still heavy with that odd fervor Hux has come to expect from Ren.

Crossing his arms and pinching the bridge of his nose, Hux reminds himself again of how rational he is. "Of course it is. Why else would they call a bunch of paranormal investigators?" he bites out.

"This isn't normal. Whatever's in there is not normal, Hux, and that woman just swans around, talking about _pools_ and _hanging gardens_ and _verandas_ \--"

"What Mrs. Winthrop does with _her_ property is, surprisingly enough, none of _your_ business, Ren. It doesn't matter if she wants to turn it into a hotel, hell, it wouldn't matter if she was planning to turn it into a goddamn spaceship and launch it into orbit, because you--"

"Christ, I don't know why I ever expected _you_ to understand."

"How do you expect me to understand when all you do is freak out without explaining anything?" Hux demands.

"I _am_ explaining. That woman has _no_ idea what she's in for."

"And that means you have to yell at her?" Hux drops his arms to his sides and clenches his fists, focusing on the familiar sting of his nails in his palms. "You can't expect people to listen to you when you fly off the handle at every little thing like this, Ren!"

"You just don't get it," Ren mutters, eyes darting back to Hux's face and Hux has to work not to flinch back from his powerful gaze. Ren never does things by halves; every single motion, every single word is overwhelming in its intensity, threatening to sweep Hux away. But Hux won't let that happen.

Hux holds Ren's stare unflinchingly. "So you've said, but how can you expect me to 'get it' when you act so--"

"Whatever, it's pointless anyway," Ren sneers, cutting his eyes back to the house.

Hux bristles, both at being interrupted again and at the underhanded slight, but any clever remark he may have made is cut short by the appearance of Phasma, strolling casually out of the wild foliage surrounding the building.

"I heard yelling," she says mildly, eyebrows raised and eyes flicking between Ren and Hux, who knows that they must look a picture of contention, Ren twitching and agitated, himself narrow-eyed and drawn like a bowstring.

"Ren is being a diva," he says, casting a glare at Ren, who grits his teeth in a very diva-like manner.

"Hux is being a simpering moron," Ren snipes back, folding his arms petulantly.

"Oh, so practicing basic human courtesy is 'simpering' now, is it?" Hux starts, in half a mind to just deck this over-dramatic, whiny, uncooperative _dick_ of a medium and deal with Dr. Snoke's disapproval later.

But Phasma is clearly having none of it. Before Ren can say whatever stupid thing he surely has brewing in his melodramatic, currently furious head, she steps between them. She's so tall Hux has to lean around her to keep glaring at Ren, who doesn't even do him the decency of glaring back.

"Hux," Phasma says matter-of-factly, forcing his attention back to her. "Go finish the interview. Mrs. Winthrop is probably pretty confused."

Even though part of him wants to stay and smash Ren's face through a window, Hux knows she's right. He turns on a sigh, wading through the wild lawn and mounting the steps to the porch.

Before he gets back inside, however, he catches one last barb from Ren:

"No, I got it Phasma, I'm fine. I'm just sick of him acting so fucking superior. Wish I'd never joined this stupid project."

If Hux's hand pauses over the doorknob, it's for less than a second, and if he has to swallow a sudden surge of unknown emotion, it has nothing to do with Ren's words. He and Ren hate each other, it's just how things are. Of course Ren would rather be anywhere but around him. Of course.

So he opens the door and enters the house calmly because he is a rational person and rational people, he reminds himself, don't care if a jumped-up, unbalanced medium likes them or not. Rational people focus on their jobs. Rational people don't have any interest in dealing with glorified psychic toddlers.

And Armitage Alexis Hux is a rational person.

\---

"That's the whole house," Mrs. Winthrop says, glancing nervously at the front door. They'd just finished the tour and arrived back the front hall, and it seems as though she's still shaken from Ren's earlier outburst. "The east wing is still condemned due to fire damage. I'm planning to just tear it down and build something else there."

Hux nods absently, making a note. The house is large, three stories, a basement, and dozens of active locations. He's got a lot of work ahead of him. "How is the building structure? Is it stable?"

Mrs. Winthrop glances around. "The contractor says so. At least the foundation for sure."

"Right. Do you have anything to add before we start?"

"No, I don't--" Mrs. Winthrop thinks for a second. "Oh! Actually, there's a woman in town, a historian. She knows all about the house. She's the one I call when I have questions. She'll be able to answer anything that might come up."

Hux pulls a sticky note from inside his binder and sticks it to the front of his folder. "Do you have her number?" he asks, pen poised.

Once Mrs. Winthrop has given him the number and warned him one last time to be careful, Hux watches her climb into her SUV and drive off. As she disappears down the winding driveway, he eyes the blocky shape of _The Finalizer_ parked in front of the house and sighs. Time to get to work.

\---

The Marigold Plantation was built in 1832 just outside the city limits of Umber, South Carolina. It sat on approximately 800 acres of land and, at its peak, was one of the biggest sugarcane operations in South Carolina. The plantation's original owner, Emmanuel Marigold was largely responsible for its success. He was infamous for his incredibly harsh treatment of slaves, setting quotas higher and higher and dishing out liberal punishment if they weren't met. He was nearly as ruthless in his private life, keeping a string of mistresses like a personal harem while maintaining an abusive hold on his young wife. When she died in childbirth in 1835, Marigold reportedly married his favorite mistress mere hours after the doctor pronounced his wife and child dead. He routinely murdered slaves and servants who displeased him and met his own untimely end at the bottom of the great house's grand staircase in 1845. Two of his mistresses were seen leaving the town together the next day. 

The house's sordid history didn't end there, however, and the plantation saw a few traditionally awful owners before the civil war began in 1861, at which time it was converted into a confederate army hospital. Shortly after this change, every slave on the plantation revolted and made a run for free territory in Virginia. Nearly 300 people were killed in the riot. Near the end of the war, Union troops stormed Umber and raided the hospital, taking all the soldiers there prisoner. The ensuing skirmish resulted in dozens of casualties, most sustained when a closed wing caught fire, trapping the patients and soldiers inside.

After the war, it didn't continue as a sugarcane plantation and instead sat vacant for many years, passing from owner to owner through wills and corporate deals, its life condensed to a few words on a piece of paper sitting in a file somewhere. Until Maisy Winthrop managed to get a hold of the deed and start planning a major renovation, dreaming of turning the beautiful old house into a unique hotel.

And it was a beautiful building, to be sure. Surrounded by what were once astonishing gardens, the main section of the house stood at three stories tall, surrounded by Greek revival columns and just dripping with antebellum flair. When he first laid eyes on it, Hux mused that it looked almost like a music box, delicate and beautiful, abandoned in the ruins of a fallen empire, just waiting to be picked up and wound again.

Then he immediately banished that embarrassingly artistic thought from his mind, worried that Ren's theatrics were rubbing off on him.

Of course, the house isn't nearly as poetic inside as the outside may lead one to believe. Caught in the nexus before a major renovation and after decades of disuse, Marigold plantation is a limbo of vintage detritus and modern paraphernalia, rooms occupied by a mix of crumbling old furniture and ladders, tarps, folding tables, tools, and people holding various kinds of clipboards. On his initial walkthrough of the house, guided by Maisy Winthrop, Hux had been less than impressed by peeling walls and creaking floors. An entire wing of the house is still completely off limits due to fire damage, and the entire estate just has an air of exhaustion and age.

Now, however, he's certainly not thinking sentimentally or judgmentally about the Marigold Plantation, smoothing a floor plan across the table in _The Finalizer_ and eyeing the impersonal lines denoting rooms and passageways critically.

He places his handful of pens aside and looks up at Ren and Phasma, who are both sitting at the table, waiting expectantly. Well, Phasma is waiting expectantly. Ren is looking unimpressed like it's going out of style.

"Okay--" Hux straightens, one hand absently combing through his hair. He'd given up on trying to keep it slicked back pretty much the instant they entered South Carolina; the heat and humidity makes his normally manageable wavy hair curl belligerently over his ears. At least now he's aware of how long it had grown while he wasn't paying attention. He needs a haircut. "According to Ms. Winthrop, we have a lot of ground to cover tonight," he says with a glance at his watch. 4 pm. After they go over this, they'll have enough time to set up the equipment before the sun goes down.

"This--" he points at a large blocky space on the paper, "--is the grand parlor. Historically, a slave woman was murdered here by Emmanuel Marigold in front of her children, who were then also murdered. It's also where Marigold used to hold his 'demonstrations' when a slave angered him." Hux's face twists in displeasure at the story. He had memorized everything he could about the plantation, as he does with every target, and he can safely say that Emmanuel Marigold is the most vile person he's ever read about while doing this job. "Ms. Winthrop says that workers and designers have felt hands touching them and heard voices while working there, but never anything more extreme than that, and they've never seen anything. So I want to leave a recorder--" he reaches for a green pen and uncaps it, making a mark in the space, "--and an EMF detector--" he repeats with a blue pen, "--in there overnight. We have plenty of those to spare."

Phasma nods in acknowledgment, which is more than he gets from Ren, who is barely even looking at the floor plan.

Through a concerted effort, Hux manages not to smack him and moves on with the plan. "The front entrance hall," he continues, "is where Marigold died, and even though he's been reported all over the house, he seems to be most active here, especially right before dawn. People have felt, heard, and seen him here, sometimes all at once, and he's appeared before multiple people at a time. According to the interviews, he's the most aggressive spirit in the house, reportedly physically shoving people and even yelling at them. A worker's brother nearly fell down the stairs last week and he swears someone pushed him from behind. So I recommend placing one camera--" he uncaps a red pen and makes a mark near the edge of the room, "--next to the front doors looking into the room, and a second camera--" he makes another mark, "--at the top of the stairs."

It goes on like that, Hux outlining where to set up equipment and Phasma listening attentively, occasionally asking a question or making a comment while Ren sulks or whatever he's doing.

That is, until Hux starts talking about the group of rooms on the second floor that belonged to Celia Marigold, Emmanuel Marigold's first wife. There hasn't been much activity reported in that area, so Hux is satisfied with just setting up an EMF detector and focusing on a hotter area, but that's when Ren decides to speak up.

"Is this the room she died in?" he says suddenly, one long finger extended to point at a spot on the paper.

Slightly startled, Hux leans over without thinking, flipping through the information stored neatly in his head. "Yes, actually, it is. How did you--"

"Put a camera in there," Ren says shortly, re-crossing his arms. "And a recorder."

Hux blinks. "Excuse me? Why? There have been no reported sightings in or around that room." He plants his fists on his hips and stares at Ren. "The most anyone's experienced there were cold spots. I hardly think that's worth losing a camera for the night."

"Something will happen." Ren sounds so sure, so certain, which is impossible. Hux is the one who did the research, who conducted the interviews, not him.

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

Hux clenches his fists, focusing on the bite of his nails rather than how much he wants to scream. "You can't _just know_ ," he says slowly. "You've never even been to that part of the house because you went postal halfway through the tour. I don't care how strong your _powers_ supposedly are, you can't _just know_ things like this."

Ren meets his eyes with an unreadable look on his face, dark gaze steady and sure and infuriating. "I just know," he says again, and Hux swears he detects the suggestion of a smirk at the corners of Ren's mouth.

"That's not--!" Hux cuts himself off on a deep inhale, forcing himself to keep his voice steady and his emotions in line. "You know what? Fine," he says sharply, grabbing the red pen and making a mark in Celia Marigold's room. "There. Are you pleased, Ren? May we continue?"

Ren doesn't answer him verbally, instead quirking one eyebrow and leaning back in his seat. He doesn't break Hux's stare, forcing Hux to look away first, eyes darting down to fix on the floor plan spread across the table. If Hux is blushing, it's from the heat of his immense hatred for Kylo Fucking Ren.

He does his best to get through the rest of the floor plan without looking at Ren.

\---

Normally, Hux never allows Ren to touch the equipment. This has less to do with their mutual animosity and distrust and more to do with Hux's own anxiety surrounding the tech. He barely even lets Phasma touch it. He's the only one on the team properly trained to handle most of the serious equipment, and the instruments are expensive enough to give Hux nightmares about someone dropping or breaking them. So it's mostly for his own peace of mind.

But rest assured, it's also because he hates Ren and doesn't trust him as a far as he can throw him.

So, under normal circumstances, he would never let Ren and Phasma set up the equipment, and had the location been any smaller, Hux would have gladly done it all himself, like usual, but the Marigold Plantation is just too big. There's no way he could get it all done on his own before sunset.

He swallows his nervousness and lets the other two place the equipment with him. Before they start, he makes sure everything is on and working so all Phasma and Ren have to do is put them down where they go.

They divide the house by floor, Phasma taking the first, Hux the second, and Ren the third, and it's with rising trepidation that Hux watches Ren disappear up the stairs, laden with bags of cameras and sensors.

"You need to relax." Phasma is behind him, already fiddling with the instruments meant for the entrance hall.

Hux snorts. "We both know that's never going to happen. Not with him around."

He hears Phasma sigh.

Balancing his own load, Hux makes his way up to the second floor and falls into the familiar routine of setting up the equipment. It's relaxing, performing the same motions he's done a thousand times before, something solid to hold on to in the hurricane his life has become since Ren joined the team. And it's soothing to remind himself that, even though he can't "understand" things the way Ren apparently can, he can still do this. He still knows this.

Of course, he doesn't realize until too late that taking the second floor also means setting up the unnecessary camera in Celia Marigold's room, and, when he reaches that one on the map, he groans.

There is absolutely no reason for this camera to be here, he gripes to himself as he shoulders into the room. It's spacious and airy, one wall lined with tall windows, clearly once intended for the lady of the house, occupied by the derelict skeletons of decades-old furniture. A bed frame still stands against one wall, the mattress long decayed away, springs jutting out haphazardly. The wide-board floors creak under his feet as he carefully makes his way to an empty corner of the room. According to Ms. Winthrop, the entire building is still structurally sound, which means there's no danger of falling through the floors, but the constant complaining and shrieking of the wood underfoot doesn't inspire Hux with much confidence.

He lets his bags thump gently to the ground, kneeling beside them to remove a camera and collapsible tripod. It almost physically pains him to set up this camera in a space with no reported visual contact. Their stationary cameras are special in that they can record in both normal and night-vision mode at the same time, allowing whoever is reviewing the footage (Hux) to switch between without having to make two separate recordings. They are very expensive and useful instruments and one should not spend the night wasting away in a room where nothing is going to happen. But Hux told Ren he would do it, and damn it, Hux is a man of his word at the very least.

He situates the camera on its tripod, checking to make sure it's secure and that the tripod's legs are safely locked in place before reaching up to unscrew the lens cap. 

"I'm surprised."

The deep voice comes out of nowhere, and Hux jolts in alarm, losing his grip on the cap and twisting around as it hits the floor. He watches in blank shock as it lands on its side and rolls across the floor before bouncing to a stop against a black boot that could only belong to one person.

"Ren," he grits out, attempting to will his heartbeat to calm the fuck down. "Is it your habit to materialize from the shadows with no warning?"

Ren looks down at him from the doorway, expression vaguely annoyed. "I've been standing here for at least a minute."

"What? No you haven't. I would have seen you. You're about as subtle as knife fight." Hux gestures to Ren's preferred all-black ensemble.

"Well, I have, and you're about as observant as a rock," Ren smirks. He leans over and picks up the lens cap at his feet. Hux's eyes follow him as he straightens again.

"What are you even doing here, Ren?" Hux asks impatiently, standing and crossing toward him.

"I finished upstairs and decided to see of you would keep your word."

Hux's eyebrows shoot up. "You were checking up on me?"

Ren fiddles with the lens cap in his hands, the motions looking almost distracted, nervous. "No. Just...indulging a curiosity." His eyes keep flicking around the room, like he's expecting to see something.

"As to whether or not I would do what I said I would? Do you doubt me, Ren?" Hux is doing a marvelous job of keeping his voice even and free of invective, if he does say so himself.

"I think you have a lot of confidence in your abilities."

"And what? That confidence doesn't allow for outside suggestions?"

"Pretty much." Ren spins the cap once more in his hand before holding it out to Hux, who is still a bit too far to take it.

Hux stares at the offered lens cap, mind whirring and churning, trying to update his Ren folder on the fly. "What is the matter with you?" he says at length. "I mean, you're usually difficult, but now it's like you're actively antagonizing me."

Ren snorts, making Hux narrow his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, General."

Hux bristles at the nickname. Snoke is the only one who uses it, and Hux is pretty sure he only does it to mock him in some way. He hasn't figured it out completely yet, but he's sure it's not meant as a compliment. "Excuse me?" he says coldly.

Ren regards him levelly, but Hux isn't playing this game anymore. He marches up to Ren and snatches the cap out of his hands, immediately returning to the set-up in the corner. "If you're done, go regroup with Phasma instead of standing around in my way."

He waits for a moment, spine stiff, refusing to turn back around and engage Ren in whatever he's trying to do, before he hears the soft shuffle of Ren's footsteps retreat down the hall.

Breathing evenly, Hux returns to his task. His normal, soothing, familiar task.

\---

The darker it gets outside, the more and more agitated Ren becomes. By the time the final sliver of the sun sinks below the horizon, leaving darkness alone to cover the plantation grounds like a heavy, sweltering blanket, Ren is practically vibrating, pacing the first floor frantically.

While Phasma drives into town to make their hotel arrangements, Hux has been splitting his time between setting up base in the downstairs drawing room and checking the mobile equipment to make sure that everything is ready for lock-up, and his urge to smack Ren rises with every pass he makes through the room. Finally, just as the last bit of natural light fades from the windows, leaving only the industrial lanterns to paint the walls with their harsh fluorescent shine, Hux can't take it anymore.

He bangs his hand on the monitor table, hard enough to jostle the equipment laid across it, and Ren pauses on his way out of the room once again, whipping around to stare at Hux.

"What is the matter with you?" Hux hisses, meeting Ren's eyes over the table. "You've never been this...restless before. On a job, anyway."

Ren regards him, and, for a moment, Hux thinks he's going to brush him off like he did on the second floor not two hours earlier. But then Ren sighs, raising his hands to press the heels of his palms to his eyes. He's still for a moment, and it occurs to Hux that Ren might have a headache. Not that that in and of itself is surprising, Ren gets headaches all the time. Part of the "package," Hux supposes.

Ren lowers his hands and looks back at Hux. "We shouldn't be here," he says blankly.

Hux, who is used to Ren's apocalyptic outbursts, actually raises his eyebrows and sets aside the digital recorder in his hand. They've been to some seriously messed up places since Ren joined the team, and he's never said that. Hux knows that Ren does, despite his surliness, like his job. He may not be the fondest of Hux or his circumstances, but he likes paranormal investigation, as much as Ren can like anything, that is. That's why his belligerence has been so frustrating.

"Why not?"

Ren shakes his head, gaze darting around the room distractedly. "I _told_ you. Earlier."

"You said a lot of things earlier."

Ren makes a frustrated noise. "It's this place, this house, it's--it's--"

"Cursed?" Hux finishes for him.

"Yeah, but it's worse than that." Ren bites his lip, running a hand through his hair. "I've never felt anything exactly like this."

Now Hux is getting a bit concerned. Just a bit. "What do you mean? Is it like what you felt back at that maternity hospital?"

"No. No, that was...bad, but it felt... _normal_ , this is...." Ren groans, brows drawn together like a storm cloud over his eyes. "I don't know how to explain it, I can just _feel_ it. Whatever's in here...it's...watching-- it knows who we are--"

"How is that possible?"

Ren swallows, throat working in quick movements under the skin of his neck. "I don't know."

"Do you...." Hux considers for a beat, his own eyes drifting of their own accord past Ren to stare out the doorway into the entrance hall. "Do you...know who it is? Who's...watching us?"

Ren goes very still and Hux cuts his eyes back to him. He's quiet for a moment, looking lost in thought, before saying, "No. No, I--can't tell. Yet." He focuses on Hux again. "But I know it's not safe."

"Since when has that stopped you?" Hux asks. "That spirit in Plymouth _scratched_ you. And _bit_ Phasma for god's sake. They don't get much worse than that."

"This one does. It wants something. And it's not afraid of us."

"Well, good." Hux folds his arms over his chest, sure he's just imagining the chill brushing over his skin through his sleeves. "Maybe we'll get something useable tonight and we won't even need to stay another night." They usually stay at least two nights, more if the ghosts are especially camera-shy. Sometimes it can take spirits a little while to get used to new people in their space.

"We should leave," Ren mutters.

"You know that's not going to happen." Hux rolls his eyes. "Snoke wants us here. We at least need to turn up _something_."

"Fine, then." Ren crosses the room to loom over the table, staring down at Hux with an odd depth in his eyes. Hux gazes back evenly. "I'll stay. You and Phasma should go back into town for the night."

For a second, all Hux can do is gape up at him, expecting an addendum, a contradiction, but Ren's expression is dead-serious. "That's easily the stupidest thing you've ever said to me," he states briskly.

"I'm serious."

"Oh, I'm sure you are." Clenching his jaw, Hux rises, reducing the distance between them. "The fact remains that it's a stupid suggestion."

Ren's eyes narrow, his posture rigid, as though he's holding himself back from something.

"Look," Hux bites out, barely contained rage nearly vibrating his body. "I am well aware that you don't think I'm _qualified_ to lead this team. You've made your disapproval abundantly clear these past few weeks. No doubt you feel your 'talents' would be better served under more competent management as opposed to being shackled to someone with as much paranormal sensitivity as a _rock_ \--," he levels a mocking sneer at Ren, who looks like he's about to bite right through his jaw from clenching it so hard, "--but believe me, as much as you hate being here, I hate having you here. So at least we agree on that. But let me remind you, Ren, that I was specifically chosen by Dr. Snoke, your revered mentor, to lead this project. So even if you don't think I'm capable enough, clearly Dr. Snoke _does_. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you afforded me at least the requisite amount of respect and didn't treat me like a child during my own investigation." Breathing a bit harder than normal, Hux keeps his gaze locked with Ren's, heart jumping in his chest both from the rush of _finally_ saying what's been gnawing at his tongue for days and the murderous look on Ren's face.

A beat stretches silently between them, neither moving, neither taking their eyes from the other, until Hux can feel the tension like a physical string connecting them, drawing tighter and tighter with each breath, each heartbeat. Suddenly the expanse of the table is far too wide; absurdly, Hux wishes they were closer, wishes that he was close enough to feel the heat radiating from Ren's adamantine frame, close enough to touch him, to hit him, to--

The protesting creak of the front door shatters the moment and it falls around them like glass as Hux rapidly tears his eyes past Ren to see Phasma strolling into the entry hall. She turns to enter the drawing room and stops short, taking in the scene before her and no doubt trying to ascertain if the personal risk of entering the room is greater than the importance of keeping to their schedule.

"Everything okay?" she asks hesitantly, settling for leaning against the empty doorframe.

Hux gathers himself. "Yes," he says briskly, not sounding at all like he just had any kind of _moment_ with Kylo Fucking Ren, "Yes, Ren was just--" he cuts his gaze fleetingly back to Ren, who turns stiffly to face Phasma, expression unreadable, "--asking me something."

"Right." Phasma sounds unconvinced but also like she doesn't really want to know. "Well, I made arrangements at a hotel in town, so that's taken care of. We should probably get started. "

With a slight start, Hux checks his watch. 7 o'clock. A quick glance out through the room's tall windows confirms that the sky has indeed faded to a complete inky black, studded with tiny pinpricks of light.

"Right," he agrees, resolutely not looking at Ren. "Let's get started then."

\---

Hux values a very organized approach to ghost hunting.

This usually starts with research. As soon as they know their next site, Hux reads up on the location as much as possible. When they arrive, he interviews their contacts and people involved with the site's activity. Then, based on their testimony and his research, he maps out where to place each piece of stationary equipment so that they can set up their surveillance network as quickly and efficiently as possible before the lockup.

"Lockup" is actually a bit of a misnomer. When they spend a night at a site, they leave all possible exits unlocked for safety reasons. Hux knows that a lot of flashier paranormal investigation teams literally lock themselves in at night, but that just always struck him as unsafe. If you're expecting a non-human entity to show up, why would you deliberately cut off your escape routes? Ghosts, by their natures, are not happy creatures, and they are virtually never thrilled to spend the night with you.

In addition to the stationary equipment, they also set up a base, usually somewhere on the ground floor, near an exit, where they keep the readout equipment. From there, every camera, audio recorder, EMF detector, and all other stationary instruments can be remotely monitored for activity. There's also an array of mobile equipment that they carry with them throughout the house. 

After the beginning of lockup, they canvas the location manually a couple times, someone always stationed in the base to keep an eye on things from there, usually until around midnight. Then they devote the next few hours to monitoring the stationary equipment from the base, investigating if they pick anything up. Around 2 or 3, they split up again and walk the house several more times. Naturally, the activity in the location is what ultimately decides their timetable, but Hux has found it very beneficial to have a schedule to return to in times of doubt.

Of course, his meticulousness only leads to more work for him. Phasma is excellent help, as always, but even with the two of them, they were always hard-pressed to get everything done efficiently. And then there was the fact that one of them always had to stay at the base, leaving the other on their own in an active site. Hux hates to admit it, but the addition of Ren to their team actually _has_ been helpful, if only because every pair of hands is invaluable in this profession

That doesn't mean Hux was thrilled to learn that Dr. Snoke's pet medium would be joining their team. He'd heard of Kylo Ren, sure, the entire department whispered about him when they thought Snoke couldn't hear them, stories and rumors of a young, massively powerful medium recruited from a university across the country, but virtually no one had ever seen him in person. Imagine Hux's surprise when he returned from a case to find a hulking, black-haired man in Dr. Snoke's office. A man who didn't raise his head at all as the doctor explained who he was and that Hux would be getting very acquainted with him very soon.

Hux just stared in blank shock as Dr. Snoke told him to play nice, struggling to reconcile the near-reverential murmurings surrounding "Snoke's personal project" with this dour, hunched creature. Numbly, he offered his hand to the man, to _Kylo Ren_ , as if someone else was controlling him. For the first time since Hux had entered the office, Kylo Ren picked his head up and met his eyes, one large hand closing around Hux's, and suddenly Hux was slammed back into his body, acutely aware of the slide of Ren's skin against his own, the piercing clarity of Ren's brown eyes, and Hux knew, in that instant, that he hated this man.

But none of that matters now, he reminds himself, double-checking the battery charge of the camcorder in his hand. Snoke wants Ren _here_ , with _them_ , so no matter how much he and Ren mutually dislike this arrangement and each other, they're stuck like this for a while.

Hux sighs, setting the camera aside, glancing at his watch. Nearly half an hour past midnight. He's already walked the house twice and it's now his turn to watch the base, sitting alone, flipping through camera feeds and audio channels, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for something, _anything_. So far, they've only encountered a spectacular amount of nothing, no voices, no EMF spikes, no cold spots. Hux is starting to wonder if Ren was just fucking with him when he said there was something really powerful in the house.

Rolling his eyes, Hux idly turns the dial on the audio selector, switching between channels, listening perfunctorily to each before moving on. He should have known better than to take anything Ren says to heart, especially recently. Ren has been jumpy and sullen since their confrontation at the beginning of the lockup, and even before that he was acting stranger than usual. Ordinarily, Hux wouldn't suspect Ren of making shit up to mess with him, but after the past few days, he isn't sure.

He flicks the dial to the left, unthinkingly, then pauses, something knocking on the edge of his awareness. Sitting up, he flicks the dial back to the right, one hand rising to press the headphones tighter against his ear, listening carefully. After a second, he hears it: a sound distinct from the ambient white noise feeding into the mic. It's irregular, a low murmur rising and falling, almost like-- whispering. Now that he's focused on it, Hux realizes that's exactly what it is. He can hear the rasp of breath around individual syllables, the stops between words, and he feels goose bumps rise along his arms.

Quickly, he looks at the channel number and checks his list for the corresponding room and--oh. Hux fights back a wave of irritation at seeing that the sound is coming from Celia Marigold's room because his personal gripes with Ren don't matter, not when he's just heard the first bit of activity they've got all night. He pulls the headphones down around his neck, tilting one side to keep it pressed against his ear, and reaches for his radio.

Pressing the talk button, he raises it to his mouth, attention still occupied with the incessant muttering coming through the audio channel.

"Hux here. Phasma, Ren," he says into the radio, "are either of you in Celia Marigold's room?"

A second of crackling silence, then Phasma's warped voice: "Negative. I'm in the cellar. Why?"

"Just a second. Ren?" Hux waits, getting nothing but buzzing silence. "Ren, answer me."

He hears a rustling sound, and then-- "No, I'm in the conservatory," Ren's voice finally comes through, sounding slightly winded even through the static of the radio frequency. "Is there something up there?"

"Maybe." Hux is already detaching himself from the headphones, draping his recorder around his neck. If Phasma's in the basement and Ren's in the conservatory, clear across the house, then he's the one closest to Celia's room right now. "I heard whispering through the audio feed. I'm going to go check it out right now."

"Wait, that's not a good idea--" Ren starts.

"It's fine," Hux cuts him off, slipping the camcorder into his pocket and clipping his EMF detector to his belt. "You can gloat later, Ren," he adds, just a touch bitterly, grabbing his flashlight and hurrying out of the room.

"No, I'm serious!"

"Maybe he's right, Hux," Phasma's clipped voice cuts through the grainy noise and Ren's incoherent cursing. "You should wait for one of us to get there before checking it out."

Hux scoffs lightly, mounting the stairs to the second floor. "And let whatever this is get away? No. This is the only activity we've had since we started, I'm not waiting around for a buddy to investigate some vague whispering."

"Seriously, Hux, just wait and we'll go together--"

"No, no one should go up there!" Ren suddenly sounds panicky, breaths heavy like he's running.

Hux just rolls his eyes, dropping his voice as he steps into the second floor hallway. "Calm down. I'll just do a sweep of the room and see if my equipment picks anything up. Hux out."

"Wait--" Hux cranks the volume down, drowning out the rest of whatever Ren was going to say, and makes his way carefully down the hall.

The door to Celia's rooms is open, but that's not unusual; Hux left it open this afternoon, and it creaks slightly as he nudges it wide enough to slip past.

Celia Marigold's room is actually a small group of rooms, fronted by a little greeting area with a fireplace and the skeletal remains of several couches. A door along the wall adjacent to the fireplace leads to what were Celia's sleeping and bathing rooms, or at least that's what Hux read. This afternoon, Hux had been too preoccupied by his unwillingness to be there that he hadn't taken proper notice of the rooms themselves. Now, in the near suffocating dark with nothing but the column of light from his flashlight to illuminate the space, is not the ideal time to examine them, but Hux does take in the peeling walls and cracked molding as he crosses the greeting room to the opposite door.

This door, too, is cracked open, and Hux pushes his way inside, mindful of the squeaky hinges, flickering his light around what was Celia's bedroom. A door on the right wall leads to a bathroom and dressing chamber, and the door Hux sees on the left must lead to what was Celia's personal parlor. But the audio recorder is in here, so the bedroom is all he's interested in.

Stepping fully into the room, Hux casts a glance at the setup in the corner. All the appropriate lights are shining in the gloom, so he knows whatever he heard wasn't an equipment malfunction. The bedroom isn't as oppressively dark as the greeting room, the dim light of the night sky filtering through the room's tall windows and suffusing everything with a dull grey glow.

For a moment, Hux stands perfectly still, ears straining for something other than the quiet creaking of the house around him. Some voices can only be picked up on recorders, but some are strong enough to be detected by human ears. It takes a few beats, but as Hux adjusts to the room, he hears it, the breathy murmuring he'd heard over the audio channel, but this time it's not strained through a microphone. This time, he hears it as if someone is standing beside him, whispering in his ear, so close than Hux can almost imagine the sweep of breath against his skin. He can't make out individual words, but he recognizes an English speech pattern, sentences undulating, words turning up at the end, and he reaches for his recorder.

Then he feels it: a brush of air across his arm, like fingers running up his skin. He fights not to jump in alarm. He's been touched before, touched, scratched, spoken to, pushed, etc. It's an occupational hazard, you grow accustomed to it. And Hux is accustomed to it, but something about the touch combined with the pervasive whisper rippling through the room sets him more on edge than usual.

He takes a deep breath to calm himself, and he feels it again, fingers trailing over the nape of his neck, sending chills erupting down his spine. Clenching his fists, he orders himself to relax, eyes flitting around the room, searching for movement and finding none. It's probably just Celia Marigold, he tells himself, she died in here. Plus, there have been no reports of aggressive contact in this area. If anything, whoever's touching him is probably just curious.

It's as he's flipping on his recorder that he realizes the whispering has grown louder. There's now a distinct voice echoing through the room, no way this could be mistaken for wind or wood creaking. Nearly breathless with excitement, Hux holds up his recorder, taking a few steps further into the room.

The voice is almost loud enough to distinguish actual words, loud enough for Hux to make out the unmistakable movement of a mouth around vowels and consonants, but there's something still in the way, a filter between Hux and the voice that keeps the words just out of reach. Another prickle brushes the back of his neck, but this time he's almost certain it's just goose bumps rising on his skin as the chill of the room lodges in his bones.

He swallows his trepidation, scanning the room, straining to decipher the whispered words.

"Who's in here?" he says slowly.

The stream of muttering doesn't hitch.

"Who's in here?" he tries again, a bit louder this time, only to be met with another light touch on his hand, the one holding the recorder. Drawing in a shaky breath, he resists the urge to pull his arm back. "Celia?" he asks hesitantly.

The word hangs in the air with the dust rising from the floorboards, and the voice staggers for a split second--

"Hux!"

Hux starts violently as the sharp voice slices through the sudden silence of the room, and he whips around, heart hammering, to see Ren standing in the doorway between the greeting room and the hall.

"Ren," he breathes, nearly slumping with relief. "Good god, do you have to yell?"

Ren is staring at him, at least as far as Hux can tell through the shadows, and he can hear his heavy breathing across the room.

"Did you run here?" Hux asks, one hand on his hip.

"Are you okay?" Ren demands, taking a step into the greeting room.

"Yes, of course I am." Hux shakes his head, gesturing around the room. "Besides, whatever was in here is probably gone now, thanks to you."

Ren doesn't seem ashamed, instead he actually seems relieved, one hand moving to push his hair away from his face. "Good. That's-- good. You're an idiot, Hux."

Hux instantly bristles. Only Kylo Ren can get him so mad so quickly. "Excuse me--," he starts, but breaks off as a hoarse creaking noise pierces the air.

Ren whirls around in time for both of them to watch the greeting room door swing shut, slamming into its frame with a wall-shaking _bang_. Ren turns back to him and meets his eyes for a horrifying second before the bedroom door hurls itself shut between them.

Hux lunges for the door, grabbing the knob and twisting, shaking it when it refuses to move. On the other side of the door, Hux can feel Ren doing the same, wrenching uselessly at the stuck knob.

"Hux!" Ren yells, voice muffled through the wood. "Hux, can you hear me!?"

"Yeah," Hux shouts back, pressing his ear to the wood, one hand still gripping the doorknob. "I'm right here. I don't know what hap--" he cuts himself off, stilling as a loud groan echoes behind him. Blood pounding in his ears, Hux turns, keeping one hand on the door, to face the room, wide eyes searching for movement and finding none.

"Hux, what happened!?" When Hux doesn't answer immediately, Ren pounds on the door, the impact reverberating through Hux's whole body.

"I--I don't know, something just--" he breaks off on a gasp, watching the dilapidated master bed frame lurch away from the opposite wall, thick wooden legs scraping the floorboards with a horrible screeching moan.

For a beat, everything is still, silent except for the sound of Hux's labored breathing. Then, a quiet whisper grazes past his ear, a whisper that sounds almost like a word: "Ce...lia...."

Suddenly, the bed frame shudders and throws itself across the room, legs dragging hideously over the floorboards, and, before Hux can even think to react, it slams into him, pinning him against the door.

"Shit," he curses vehemently, struggling to free his legs. The bed caught him just under the knees, and even though he can't feel any pressure intentionally keeping it there, the frame is huge and solid, too heavy to just nudge aside, and he can't get enough leverage to push it.

He can hear Ren pounding on the door again, "Hux! Hux, what happened!? Hux, goddammit, answer me!" and beyond that, he thinks he can hear more pounding and yelling, probably Phasma, stuck out in the hall.

"I'm--fine!" he calls back, hissing in pain as he tries to twist one leg free. "The bed! It--I don't know, _moved_ \-- I'm pinned to the door!"

"Fuck!" Ren screams eloquently, and Hux can just imagine him pulling at his hair in distress. "You need to get out of there!"

"Oh, really! I didn't know!"

"Now!"

"I'm working on it!" He grunts and finally manages to yank his right leg free. Just then, another groan jerks his head up in time to see a tall, warped armoire careen away from the wall. "Oh, fuck."

Ignoring the ache blooming across his shin, Hux plants his foot on the edge of the bed frame and shoves as hard as he can, gratified to feel the thing shift forward. As soon as he has enough space, he spins around and rips the door open, coming face-to-face with Ren, who grabs him by the arm and drags him through the doorway just as the door slams shut behind him from the force of a deafening crash. 

Before Hux can even take a breath, Ren is pulling him across the room, the floors and walls shaking as doubtlessly more furniture flings itself against the bedroom door. The hall door bursts open and Phasma stumbles forward.

"What hap-"

Ren brushes past her without a word, not loosening his grip on Hux's arm even after they've escaped to the hall, long strides only speeding up, forcing Hux to practically jog to keep pace. Not that he's exactly complaining. He wants nothing more than to be as far from Celia Marigold's room as possible.

Ren doesn't let go until they're all safely locked in _The Finalizer_ , his big hand unwinding from around Hux's forearm. Hux's heart is still thundering against his ribs, each beat rattling his chest as he shakily lowers himself onto the couch.

"What the fuck happened?!" Phasma demands, turning accusing eyes on each of them in turn, hands planted on her hips like a disapproving mother. She's breathing heavily as well, short blonde hair disheveled and hanging over her forehead.

Hux opens his mouth to answer her but finds he doesn't have the words to describe what just occurred. Ren, for his part, doesn't offer anything either, pacing the length of the RV frantically, hands in his hair, stopping to peer distractedly out the window.

Phasma makes a frustrated noise. "Should I assume _that_ all of that was activity and not just you two being dicks?"

Hux looks up at her and forces his voice to work. "Yes," he says, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands together. "That was...that wasn't us." He can't bring himself to say anything more, the memory stalling in his mind and refusing to form words in his mouth. Almost against his will, he turns to look at Ren and is unsurprised to find him staring back, dark eyes glittering.

"What should we do?" Phasma asks.

"We need to leave," Ren states distantly.

This time, the bruising rhythm of Hux's heart drowns out his will to protest.

\---

"Actually," he says, slamming the bathroom door behind him, "this was a stupid idea."

They're at the hotel, gathered in Ren and Hux's room, ostensibly to decide what to do next but Phasma has been mainly taking the time to scold them. The plan was to spend the rest of the night at the hotel and go back in the morning, despite Ren's insistence that they not return, but as Hux was getting ready for bed, he realized how ridiculous this all is and is now facing the room wearing sweats and his most deliberately irritated face.

"There was no reason to leave the site," he continues, throwing his jeans on top of his open duffel bag with perhaps a bit more force than necessary.

"Hux, you were physically attacked," Phasma responds, a note of exasperation riding her words. She leans back in her chair, one hand tapping the surface of the table she's sitting at. "I think that's a pretty good reason to step back and reevaluate."

Ren is sitting on one of the room's two beds, head in his hands, and he doesn't acknowledge the exchange.

Hux rolls his eyes. Now that he has some perspective, the debacle in Celia Marigold's room doesn't seem nearly as frightening as he initially perceived it. Like with most things, hindsight makes things clearer. And he's more than a little embarrassed by his ineffective handling of the situation. He was dangerously close to panicking, and panic is not efficient.

"Okay, but let's look at what actually happened," he starts, smoothing his voice down until he sounds logical and calm, not allowing the residual fluttering in his stomach to color his words. "The doors closed on their own. That's completely normal. It happens to us all the time, hardly something to get worked up over."

"It did it on purpose," Ren mutters, speaking for the first time since his declaration on The Finalizer. "It waited until we were in separate rooms to close the doors. It was trying to separate us."

"That's absurd, Ren." Hux crosses his arms. "Spirits don't think that way. They're not like us, they can't make _plans_."

Ren lifts his head and narrows his eyes at Hux. "It laid a trap and you walked right into it."

Hux snorts. "Then why didn't it shut me in as soon as I walked into the room?"

An indefinable emotion flashes across Ren's face before it closes off again. "I don't know," he grits out, like the words physically pain him to say.

"Because it wasn't intentional. Us being in separate rooms was entirely coincidental. Ghosts can't lay _traps_ , Ren."

"It tried to _kill_ you!"

"I think that's a bit dramatic, honestly," Hux says dismissively, taking a perverse sort of enjoyment in watching Ren's features cloud over with rage. "Moving furniture is common spiritual activity, practically generic. I just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I highly doubt the spirits of Marigold Plantation are interested in me enough to want me dead."

"You don't know _anything_ \--"

"Yes, so you've said," Hux snaps, tired of being told how ignorant he is in affairs of the dead. "That doesn't change the fact that we overreacted--"

"Overreacted?" Ren unfolds his frame from the edge of the bed, closing the few feet between them to loom over Hux, who resents that he has to tilt his head up to hold his gaze. "Tell me you're not this stupid, to think that we should have _stayed_ \--"

"Yes, we should have stayed!" Hux nearly yells back, balling his hands into fists at his sides to keep them from relocating to Ren's face. "Do you have any idea how completely _unprofessional_ it is to abandon a site in the middle of a lockup? It's laughable! Juvenile! Although I suppose that's in keeping with your whole--"

"Are you completely blind?" Ren snarls, furious. "You don't listen to anything anyone else has to say--"

"Like you do?!"

"You nearly get yourself killed by being a fucking idiot and then you want to go back because it's _unprofessional_ \--"

"Running away at the first sign of activity is what amateurs do, Ren, and we're not a group of fucking amateurs! At least we _weren't_ ," Hux spits the word out right in Ren's face, intending it to hurt, intending to let Ren know exactly how he feels about him, and feels a thrill of vindictive glee at Ren's minute flinch, the slight widening of his eyes. "You may have your magical powers, Ren, but I know what I'm doing."

"Obviously not," Ren hisses, eyes dark and cold to match his voice. Hux feels their chill creep across his skin like fingers, like the invisible hands that ghosted over him earlier. "Or you wouldn't be insisting on going back just to spite me. Don't act like I'm the only _juvenile_ one here, General."

"How dare you," Hux says lowly, the stinging cold of Ren's words biting all the way to his bones, his head reeling from Ren's rapid shift from blazing fury to freezing contempt. He clenches his fists tighter, fighting not to break Ren's gaze, not to be swept away by the frightening intensity simmering in Ren's eyes. Ren thinks he knows everything, cocky in Dr. Snoke's favor, but he doesn't know Hux, not as much as he thinks he does.

An icy silence hangs between them, heavy with words unsaid and rippling with something violent, dark red and angry, but before they can strangle each other, a stabbing ache throbs through Hux's leg, forcing his attention down, breaking the thread of tension coiling between them with a soft hiss of pain.

He brushes past Ren to perch on the edge of the bed, leaning over to pull up his pants leg. He has to bite his lip to keep from grimacing as he catches sight of the ugly mottled purple and red bruise blooming up and down his shin. An identical ache in his other leg informs him that he probably has a matching set. He must have been too distracted to notice them while he was changing because they're impossible to ignore now, dark against his pale skin and sending dull pain shooting up his legs.

"Oh my god," Phasma remarks, rising from her chair and crossing the room to get a closer look. "Where did _that_ come from?"

Hux shakes his head in agitation, running a careful hand over the discolored flesh, wincing as even the gentle motion makes pain echo through his leg. "I was pinned to the door by the bed frame," he sighs. "It must have hit me harder than I thought." How inconvenient.

Phasma frowns, eyebrows drawn together with worry. "Maybe we should go to the hos--"

"No," Hux cuts her off decisively. "It's just a bruise. There is _no need_ to get worked up."

"But what if there's something else you didn't notice?"

"I'm fine." Hux's tone leaves no room for argument and Phasma purses her lips in disapproval but doesn't press the matter.

"Well, you should at least stay here tonight," she says, and Hux supposes she has a point. Now that he's aware of them, the bruises hurt like a bitch and walking around all night no longer sounds like an enticing prospect.

"Fine," he concedes, loath to give Ren the satisfaction but rational enough not to be petty about it. "You win, Ren. Congratulations." Well, okay. Maybe a little petty.

A glance at Ren reveals that he's not rising to the bait, however, and is instead standing frozen, spine rigid and wide eyes fixed on the floret of marbled colors spread across Hux's skin.

"Ren?" Hux tries. Ren doesn't react. "Ren?" Hux says again, louder, and Ren starts slightly, gaze flickering between Hux's face and his leg. Hux lets go of his pant leg, allowing the fabric to fall over his shin, hiding the unsightly bruise, and Ren huffs out a breath, one hand running nervously through his hair. His eyes are glassy and Hux, despite himself, feels the barest tendrils of concern curling in his gut.

"Ren, are you okay?" he asks, pushing himself to his feet. When Ren doesn't respond, he takes a step toward him. "Ren, answer me."

That seems to snap Ren out of whatever episode he's having. He stumbles backward slightly, blinking hard. "I--I'm...it's--you're--I--," he stutters.

"What's wrong?" Hux insists, vaguely alarmed.

Ren stares at him for a beat, opening and closing his mouth like he's trying to say something, before making a frustrated growling sound and pushing roughly past Hux, heading for the door.

"Wait, Ren!" Hux grabs his sleeve, instinctively worried about letting him go off on his own at night, but Ren just shakes him off and wrenches the door open. "Ren!"

Ren slams the door behind him hard enough to make Hux flinch and barely a moment passes before he hears the unmistakable sound of Ren's motorcycle revving up. As the distinctive growl fades into the distance, Hux can't do anything but stare at the closed door.

Silence sits in the room for a beat while Hux tries to figure out what just happened. Why would Ren just leave like that? Is he coming back? Did Hux finally push him too far?

But he doesn't care. He forces those questions, those _worries_ down as far as they'll go and turns away from them. Because he doesn't care.

Phasma shifts uncomfortably behind him. "Hux...."

"It's fine."

"He'll be back in the morning."

"I don't care."

"He probably just needs to cool off."

"What Kylo Ren does with his time doesn't concern me at all."

"He's probably--"

"Phasma," Hux interrupts her, keeping his voice carefully level. "The last thing I want to think about right now is Kylo Fucking Ren and his hysterics. I don't care if he leaves. I don't care if he never comes back. I don't--," his voice doesn't hitch, "--care."

Phasma just nods, something that looks disgustingly like pity spreading across her face.

If Hux doesn't sleep well that night, it has nothing to do with Ren's words, his hasty departure, or the empty bed on the other side of the room. 

\---

The sun is high in the sky and beating down with a vengeance by the time Phasma and Hux make it back to the Marigold Plantation the next day. Hux had insisted on collecting the data from the previous night because "At least the equipment probably did its job, Phasma, unlike us."

They were mostly silent on the drive up, Phasma calm and focused behind the wheel, having bullied Hux out of driving, and Hux alternating between worrying about Ren and intentionally not worrying about Ren in the passenger seat. Ren hadn't come back the previous night, and while Ren often takes off, in a huff or otherwise, he usually doesn't stay away this long, normally riding off his frustration and returning a few hours later a bit calmer. He's never stayed out all night before, and after his odd behavior before he left, Hux can't shake the image of a mangled and smoking motorcycle, ridden into oncoming traffic by the world's most frustrating medium.

But he doesn't actually care.

The tall, overgrown grass crunches under his feet as he wades through the lawn, heading for the porch steps. Sunlight pours down on him, making him sorely regret his clothing choice of jeans and a button-up, but he didn't have time to put on sunscreen and he burns if he even thinks about the sun for too long, so it's a necessary evil.

He decides to take care of the outside camera set-up before he heads in and directs his steps around the main building, pushing through the untamed foliage edging the gardens. Soft rustling behind him draws his attention to Phasma, easily striding through the thick grass and he spares a second to be envious of her long legs.

"I'm going to grab the card out if the camera in the rose garden," he tells her as she falls in step beside him.

"Are you okay to be walking around like this?" she asks, glancing down pointedly.

Hux rolls his eyes, ducking under a low-hanging branch and emerging in a ruined garden, complete with broken stepping stones, hopelessly overgrown weed-choked flowerbeds, and a heavily weathered, defunct fountain. "For god's sake, Phasma, they're _bruises_ not stab wounds. I can't even feel them right now." Mostly true. As long as he stands completely still, the bruises on his shins don't bother him. However, every movement that stretches his skin or causes the fabric of his pants to brush the damaged flesh sends an unpleasant twinge up his leg. Upon examining them that morning, he was irritated to find that the already gross mix of colors had darkened until it looked nearly black in some spots and the whole mess was ridiculously tender to the touch. Perhaps the bruising is deeper than he initially thought, but it's still nothing to get worked up over.

"You're always like this," Phasma sighs, wandering into the garden behind him.

Hux, just about to kneel in front of the camera pointed at the fountain (which, according to witnesses, is the dead gardener's favorite haunt), pauses. "Like what, exactly?"

"Dismissive, obsessive." She sticks her hands in her pockets, glancing casually around the sun-dappled clearing. "Juvenile."

Shoulders stiffening, Hux rounds on her. "Are you and Ren suddenly in league against me?" he demands, as authoritatively as he can manage while craning his neck to keep eye-contact. "Are you conspiring to undermine my leadership? Is this a mutiny?"

Phasma actually has the gall to look amused, lips twisting into a sardonic half-smile and one eyebrow quirking up toward her hairline. "And you call Ren the dramatic one."

"He is! This is a legitimate concern, Phasma!"

"Calm down, no one's trying to depose you," she almost laughs, one hand coming up to ruffle his hair. He swats at her hand but misses as she yanks it back, chuckling.

"Then you and Ren are just conspiring to make me miserable for no reason?"

" _Dramatic_."

"It's not dramatic if it's true!"

"You and Ren make each other miserable like it's your day job."

"Well--," Hux frowns, futilely attempting to reorder his hair, not that it was very ordered to begin with, "--we dislike each other. So it's understandable that we'd share a certain level of... _hostility_."

"'Dislike' is a pretty weak word."

Hux snorts, turning away from her smirking face and kneeling before the camera. "You're right. I suppose _hate_ would better describe our mutual animosity."

"Do you hate him?"

"Ren?"

"Who else?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I--" Hux's fingers still over the memory card port in the side of the camera, freezing as he realizes the words aren't there. The logical answer, the correct answer to Phasma's question is _yes, yes I hate him, of course I hate him, what other emotion can one feel for Kylo Ren?_ but the words won't come. He takes a deep breath. "Of course I do," he says, tone landing somewhere between casual and terrified.

"I see."

"I mean," Hux starts, sitting back on his heels and regarding the camera intently. "We were doing perfectly fine before Dr. Snoke put us on babysitting duty, weren't we? I know it was a bit difficult sometimes with only two people, but we did well, I believe."

Phasma makes a noncommittal noise somewhere behind him.

"We got a lot done even without a medium. Or whatever Kylo Ren is."

"For someone who believes in ghosts, your lack of faith in spiritual abilities is honestly puzzling."

"There's a difference between the dead and the living, okay? Spirits are spirits and people are people, they don't _intermingle_ , as it were. At least not to the level that Ren claims." Hux shakes his head, looking down at his hands, curled into fists in his lap. "But that's not the point. The point is that we were doing perfectly well without Kylo Ren. And since he joined the team...it's like nothing can be easy anymore. We had _systems_ , we had a routine, and Kylo Ren is just a huge wrench in the machine. I honestly don't see the point of having him here-- he's rude, he's contentious for _no_ reason, he's always looking for something to argue over or complain about. I've never worked with someone so intentionally disobliging. With Kylo Ren around, _everything_ is such an _ordeal_ , it's honestly exhausting. And he never once stops to consider how his actions affect others, because he's a selfish, hysterical _child _and I should cringe at the very idea of having him on the team--" Hux hesitates, staring blankly, mulling the words over in his head. He doesn't think he's ever been more truthful in his entire life, but--__

"But?" Phasma prods.

Hux swallows, blinks a few times, forces his hands to unclench, loosening his nails from his skin.

"But--," he takes a breath, then a second, his heart fluttering oddly quickly in his chest. The unbearable heat is only exacerbating the sudden tightness in his lungs. "But when he left last night--," another breath, another flash of heat down his spine, "--I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. Because I knew...that he left because of me." Face blank, he looks over his shoulder at Phasma, who's still standing, listening, behind him. "And I hate that. And I don't know why."

Phasma doesn't say anything, simply lowering herself to kneel beside him in the grass. Hux clasps his hands together to keep himself from slicing his palms open on his nails and she covers his hands with one of her own. Normally, Hux would balk at the intimate sign of affection, but he feels so frustratingly undone he can't bring himself to pull away. This is probably the most he's actually thought about his _feelings_ in...years, and it's pathetic, honestly, how unraveled he's become. Even in absentia, Kylo Fucking Ren manages to ruin his day. 

\---

They get back to the hotel around midday, and, after helping her check her blood sugar, Hux insists that Phasma go get something to eat.

"You should come with me," she says, leaning against the open car door. "You need a break."

"I've had enough of a break, I think." He smiles ruefully, tucking the glucose meter into its case and passing it to her. "I have too much work to do."

She looks like she wants to argue, regarding him doubtfully, but she knows better by now than to press the issue. Not that she hasn't liberally yelled at him for overworking in the past, but Hux figures she's learned to pick her battles, and this isn't worth fighting over.

So she just rolls her eyes and slides into the car. Hux waits until she's out of the parking lot before climbing into _The Finalizer_ , latching the door behind him.

He wasn't lying about having work to do. Now that he has the data from last night, he has to go through it for evidence to compile and send back to Snoke. He has no doubt that the memory cards he took from the camera and recorder in Celia Marigold's room will yield some interesting information. He also has no doubt that Dr. Snoke will find a way to discredit it.

Over the months of this project, Hux has sent Snoke videos of hovering objects, recordings of voices speaking languages no one on the team knows, countless records of EMF spikes and cold spots, photographs of figures and shadow people, even pictures of that particularly impressive bite mark on Phasma's shoulder, but no matter what he sends back, nothing is good enough. Dr. Snoke always finds something wrong, some way the data could have been manipulated even though Hux runs extensive tests to make sure everything is unaltered before sending it off. If he didn't know better, Hux might assume that Dr. Snoke was deliberately discounting his findings, but Dr. Snoke is one of the country's forefront paranormal researchers and a contemporary of his own father. He would never do something so unprofessional. He has no reason to. None that Hux can discern anyway.

No, Hux must simply be missing something, something that Dr. Snoke is better equipped to recognize. He just has to keep going. Someday, he'll find something that even Snoke can't disprove.

He watches the footage from Celia's room first, scanning dispassionately through the first few hours of nothing until he sees himself nudge the door open. The camera was in the corner of the room, so Hux has a clear view of nearly the entire space, the decrepit bed edging into the frame on the right. The video has no sound, but the quality is high enough that he can make out his mouth moving as he talks. As the video plays, he sees himself wander further into the room. There's enough light falling through the room's windows for the camera to display the image satisfactorily without having to switch to the night vision capture, and he watches himself whirl around to face the door, Ren partially visible in the other room. He regards the footage critically as both he and Ren jump at what he recalls as the first door slamming and as the bedroom door swings inexplicably shut between them. The Hux in the video grabs for the doorknob and Hux can see his mouth moving as he yells at Ren on the other side of the door. Then the bed frame gives a shuddering jolt and Hux watches it shoot across the room to crash into him. He watches himself struggle with it for a beat before the armoire to the left of the frame jerks away from the wall and he manages to shove the bed away and open the door, Ren's arm appearing briefly to yank him through right before the armoire slams into the bed frame, toppling forward and cracking against the door. Then he watches a chest of broken drawers do the same, followed by a short table, until a veritable blockade of furniture is piled against the door. The footage sends chills down his spine, not just because he knows he was seconds away from being buried in a mound of dilapidated furniture, but also because all of that furniture had been back in their proper places when he retrieved the memory card from the camera. 

Pushing his uneasiness aside, Hux goes through the video a few more times, flicking perfunctorily between the night vision and normal modes, hoping to pick up something other than his own figure and the inexorable moving furniture. But there's nothing else to see. He listens to the audio from Celia's room, hearing the vague whispering, which at least had imprinted on the recording, and his and Ren's voices, but nothing more distinct than that. Frustrated, Hux adjusts his headphones and rewinds the audio to the beginning of the night, setting it to play at 2X real time speed. He has a lot to get through and he doesn't have time to listen to 10 hours of audio from each recorder on top of reviewing 10 hours of video from each camera.

As he listens, he pages absently though his notes, scanning the interview responses from people who had experiences in the house. Hux is a very thorough note-taker, and he has plenty of eye-witness testimony to the haunted nature of Marigold Plantation, his own notwithstanding. In addition to Maisy Winthrop, he interviewed the head renovation architect, the lead designer, a few workers, and the foundation inspector, all of whom had spent enough time in the house to experience the activity. He remembers his meeting with Maisy Winthrop, which went much smoother after Ren stormed off.

_"Oh, yeah, plenty of times," Maisy said, eyes darting almost furtively around what used to be the drawing room. "I can't come in this place without feeling like I'm being watched. I used to think, you know, there are usually a lot of people here, workers and stuff, so maybe it was just them. But--," she drew her cardigan closer to herself, crossing her arms over it, "--there have been times-- sometimes I'll meet with Jason, uh, my lead designer, here to discuss things, late 'cuz our days are pretty busy, and, even though I know it's just the two of us, I just know there's someone else in the house. It's like...I dunno, I can't explain it. I just know, you know?"_

_Hux made a note. "Have you ever been physically touched by this presence?"_

_"Oh, no," Maisy gave a shaky laugh, "I don't know if I could handle something like that. But my husband, he has. Sometimes he'll come up here to visit me when I'm working. Or he used to."_

_"Used to?"_

_"Yeah, he doesn't want to come up here anymore. Won't even walk through the front door. Can't say I blame him." She shrugged, smiling sardonically. "I wouldn't want to be here either if I was him."_

_"What has he experienced?"_

_"God, all sorts of things. He says he's been touched and even pushed a few times. Once we were standing in the attic together and he told me to stop grabbing his arm, but I wasn't grabbing his arm." She grimaced. "That was creepy, even for me. He started refusing to visit after he said he heard someone say they were going to kill him."_

_Hux raised his eyebrows in mild interest. "He heard someone say this? Out loud?"_

_"He says he did. Somewhere on the second floor, I think. He wouldn't tell me everything, but he insists that someone said 'I'm going to kill you' right to him. Frankly, I'm inclined to believe him."_

_"Hm."_

_"Knowing that, I actually feel better if he doesn't come around anymore. Even if it's all in our heads, why take the chance, right?"_

_"Hm."_

The memory gives him pause, tiny alarm bells going off inside his head. Maisy was the only person he met with in person, all the other interviews had been conducted over the phone, but something--

Hux flips through his notes until he finds the record of his interview with Jason Brightridge, the lead designer.

_Q: And that's the extent of your experiences in the house?_

_A: Yeah, well, unless you count what my girlfriend has told me._

_Q: Your girlfriend?_

_A: I forget things at home a lot, so my girlfriend is always dropping things off for me, but recently, she'll only drive up to the property line and I have to go meet her if I forget something. She won't come in the house anymore._

_Q: Because she's experienced the activity._

_A: Hell, way more than me. She's been pushed and even scratched, I swear to god. I used to find bruises on her legs that she couldn't explain. Crazy shit like that. I thought at first she was just being paranoid, but those bruises...some of them kind of looked like hands. I don't know what to think. I can't blame her for wanting to stay away from the house._

The two stories sound eerily similar. Hux quickly skims through the rest of his notes, becoming increasingly alarmed as he finally notices a trend, and the pattern is so obvious he wants to kick himself. None of the most violent or disturbing incidents happened to any of the people directly involved in the remodeling, only to loved ones visiting the house. For whatever reason, whatever is in the Marigold Plantation great house isn't as interested in harming or scaring the workers or designers as it is in bothering their wives and boyfriends and children.

Hux leans back in his chair, frowning down at his notes. This revelation is...puzzling, at the very least, and only raises more questions than it answers. Why would the presence in Marigold care specifically about harassing people tangential to the renovation? Usually, a spirit disturbed by construction is primarily interested in troubling the main body of work. This doesn't make logical sense.

Frustrated, Hux slaps the file folder shut, and his eye catches on a sticky note adhered to the manila face of the folder as if flutters with the quick movement. Inscribed across it in his own neat cursive is a phone number and the words _Amelia Bevel, local historian_. Hux forgot sticking it there, but now he remembers Maisy Winthrop's suggestion that he call and speak to this woman if he had further questions about the property.

Well, he thinks, furrowing his brow at the number, he certainly has more questions now.

He taps the number into his cell, eyes flicking around the RV's interior as it rings.

"Amelia Bevel." The voice that answers on the third ring is warm and reedy, even through the cellular connection, vowels heavy with a thick southern accent.

"Hello Ms. Bevel, my name is Armitage Hux and I'm part of a paranormal research team investigating the Marigold Plantation," Hux says, falling instinctively back into his carefully cultivated, non-threatening professionalism.

"Oh, yes," Ms. Bevel responds immediately, "Maisy did mention she had called someone."

"Yes, ma'am. She told me I could contact you if I had any further questions about the property."

"Well, I would certainly be the one to ask. No one knows more about that place than I do."

"Of course. Ms. Winthrop told me you are a reputable southern historian."

"It's more than that, dear," Ms. Bevel chuckles on the other end of the line and Hux can hear her smiling around the words. "I'm the only living descendant of the Marigold slaves in the whole state. What goes on at the Marigold plantation, well. It's...personal for me, you could say."

Eyebrows raised, Hux scratches out a quick note for himself. "My research indicated all the slaves fled the state during the war."

Ms. Bevel hums. "Most did, but a few stuck around the town, including my great great great grandaddy. He had connections." She barks out a laugh. "But you didn't call about my family tree, now did you?" 

"No, Ms. Bevel, actually...." Hux trails off, unsure how to frame his request, unsure what it is he even really wants from Amelia Bevel. "To be honest, I was hoping you could provide some...context for a _trend_ I've noticed in regards to the Marigold Plantation."

"A trend?"

"Yes, in my research on the activity surrounding the property, I noticed that people directly involved with the renovation are rarely as--" Hux casts out for the right word, "--bothered as people tangentially related, like family members or spouses."

"You've got quite a vernacular, boy." Ms. Bevel's voice sounds distinctly amused and Hux feels heat rush to his cheeks.

"I'm sor--"

"No, no, I'm just playing," Ms. Bevel laughs. "You sound so proper. It's cute."

Hux furrows his eyebrows. He is not _cute_ , he is _professional_.

"And yes," Ms. Bevel continues, "I suppose that makes sense. That's what he loved best when he was alive. After the incident with Celia, of course."

Hux scribbles quickly, absorbing the new information. "You mean, when she died in childbirth?"

"Oh goodness, honey," Ms. Bevel laughs breathlessly. "Celia Marigold had a perfectly normal pregnancy and a safe birth."

Hux pauses. "My research--"

"Her death was officially listed as complications from childbirth," Ms. Bevel explains. "But that was a lie. She and the baby were fine. But the baby wasn't Emmanuel Marigold's child."

"Celia was having an affair?"

"Yes, sir. She did a good job keeping it a secret, but when that baby came out black as soot, there wasn't much she could do."

Hux leans back in his chair, puzzling over this revelation. "So Emmanuel Marigold killed her and the baby?"

Ms. Bevel hums. "Emmanuel Marigold was a man who had never wanted for anything. He was used to getting whatever he wanted, and he couldn't stand losing Celia, at least that's how he saw it."

"He lost her when she started sleeping with another man."

"Killing her and the baby was just routine. To him, the greatest pain he'd ever felt was in the knowledge that he'd lost something he thought of as his."

Hux squeezes his eyes shut, free hand pinching the bridge of his nose, mind spinning with implications. "Okay," he says, opening his eyes, running a hand through his hair, "So after that is when he started...."

"He started killing the family members and partners of people who displeased him, yes." Ms. Bevel is silent for a moment, as though considering something. "After that, he believed the greatest pain was having someone you cherished taken from you."

"And you know this because of your family?"

"Everyone on the plantation knew what was going on, all the slaves knew exactly what had happened with Celia. These stories were passed down through generations and I'm probably the only person in the state who knows what really happened."

Hux bites his lip. "Ma'am--"

"Oh, I know," Ms. Bevel cuts him off. "You don't seem like the type of person who trusts hearsay. Well, I don't have any sources to cite, and I honestly don't know from Adam if any of this is true, but it explains quite a bit, doesn't it?"

Hux gazes blankly at the monitor in front of him, frozen on a shot of the furniture piled against the door in Celia's room. "Maybe," he says distantly. Or maybe it just raises more questions than it answers.

He opens his mouth to thank Ms. Bevel for her time but before he can say a word, the distinctive rumble of a motorcycle engine from outside the RV shoves all other thought from his brain. He twists in his chair, listening as the growl reaches a peak before sputtering out, and then he jolts to his feet.

"Thank you very much, Ms. Bevel," he says hastily, reaching the door in a few quick steps. "I'm sorry, but I have to go now." He doesn't even wait for her reply before he's ending the call and jamming his phone into his back pocket, shouldering the door open to stand blinking in the glaring southern sunshine.

Kylo Ren and his awful motorcycle have come to a stop on the curb in front of their motel room, and as Hux marches up to him, Ren nudges the kickstand into place and brings his hands up to remove his helmet and hang it on one of the handles.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Hux demands, hands on his hips as Ren shakes out his hair. "You can't just take off like that, Ren! What if something had happened to you? What were we supposed--," Hux breaks off, noticing Ren's dazed expression. "Ren?"

Ren just shakes his head, not meeting his eyes. He dismounts the bike but his legs buckle almost instantly and Hux lunges forward, catching him around the chest before he hits the ground.

"Oh my god, Ren, what the--," a horrible idea occurs to him as he props Ren's massive frame up as best he can. "You didn't drive all night, did you?"

Ren mutters something unintelligible and Hux grabs his face with one hand, forcing Ren to look at him. Ren's eyes are glassy, hung with heavy dark shadows, and he seems to be struggling to keep them open.

"Fuck, Ren, do you have any idea how _dangerous_ that is?" Hux hisses, distraught.

"I'm _fine_ ," Ren insists, the slight slur in his words not doing much to help his case.

"You are absolutely not _fine_ , you're an idiot and you're going to get yourself killed," Hux mutters, pulling Ren's arm around his shoulders so he can guide him to the room.

Ren snorts, allowing himself to be led. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Hux shoots Ren a dirty look, fishing in his pocket for his room key. "You cannot compare my mild carelessness to your unrelenting recklessness," he says, unlocking the door and pulling Ren inside, "and-and _blatant_ disregard for personal safety--"

"God, you talk so much."

Hux dumps Ren unceremoniously on top of his bed with a glare. "Maybe if you just do what I tell you, I won't have to talk so much."

Ren immediately curls up on his side. "But that wouldn't be any fun," he murmurs, eyes shut.

Before Hux can ask what he means, Ren is out like a light, breaths deep and even. Hux just stares at him for a minute, incredulous and still spinning with worry. Ren looks much younger when he's asleep. Hux knows that Ren is only 22, a first year grad student, but when he's awake he just comes across as taciturn and brooding and older than he actually is. It's his eyes. Ren has years in his eyes that he shouldn't. But asleep, it's obvious how young he is, his face smooth and unworried, only marred by a scattering of tiny dark birthmarks and long lashes carving black crescents through his pale skin. The oil spill of his hair pools on the bedspread and Hux has to shake off the ridiculous temptation to run his fingers through it.

After a second of deliberation, Hux settles on unlacing and removing Ren's boots for him, placing them neatly beside the bed, and tugging the comforter off his own bed to drape over Ren's slumbering form. Then he leaves the room, flicking the light off as he goes, before he can do anything stupid like stroke Ren's hair.

Besides, he has a lot of information to process before sunset.

\---

The great house stares at him with dark, hollow windows as Hux winds his way through the overgrown front lawn. The plantation is far enough from the town that the only sounds interrupting the hushed twilight are the soft buzzing of summer insects and quiet swish of untamed grass brushing against Hux's jeans as he passes. The muffled din is peaceful in a deceptive way, lulling the late evening into a state of stillness that Hux doesn't trust for a second.

Ren was still sleeping when he left but he'd been held up when Phasma decided to subject him to a very passive-aggressive lecture about how teams that weren't in harmony couldn't work efficiently and how such teams shouldn't attempt anything until they'd had a chance to work out their issues and _are you listening to me, Hux?_ She barely looked convinced when he assured her he was going to take the night to sort through their footage but allowed herself to be directed back to her room anyway. Nearly as soon as her door clicked shut, Hux climbed in the car and took off for the Marigold Plantation.

He has a score to settle.

Whether it's with whatever is in the house or with Ren or with himself, he's not sure, but Hux is never one to just let things go.

That's the whole reason he hunts ghosts in the first place. Pure, blind, dumb stubbornness.

The warped boards of the porch creak under his feet as he approaches the front door, which protests loudly on aching hinges as Hux swings it open. The noises are somehow amplified in the gloom of the evening, a hundred times more unsettling than when he was here during the day. A shiver of unease traces down his spine before he coldly dismisses it as unhelpful.

Their base is still set up exactly as they left it. Hux had checked on it that morning and had considered packing it up, but with Ren and his unnecessary but admittedly efficient muscles absent and Hux's dogged desire to return still biting at his ear, he'd made the decision to leave everything where it was. He'd worried briefly about the possibility of thieves or teenage hooligans, but the plantation's reputation and classification as an active construction zone had kept people away, according to the owner, so Hux had set that concern aside. Now the monitors and cases stacked on the tables look stark and eerie in the scant light afforded by the drawing room's windows.

He grabs a flashlight off the table and thumbs it on, flicking the beam over the stained walls, backing up into the entrance hall and shining it up the sweeping grand staircase. The light degrades before it reaches the top, leaving Hux staring into the darkness consuming the second-floor landing with slight trepidation. As illogical as he knows fear is, the memory of that disembodied whispering voice and the bruises on his legs speak a bit louder than his normal cool-headedness, warning him not to go upstairs. He bites it back as he puts his foot on the first stair. 

The grand staircase cuts directly through the center of the entrance hall, a design element apparently unique to Marigold Plantation. According to Maisy Winthrop, most other plantation great houses opted for more reserved entrance halls, preferring to focus attention on the exterior architecture instead, but Emmanuel Marigold was nothing if not excessive. In addition to being wide and sweeping, the staircase is ornately carved and longer than necessary, raking less severely than other stairs throughout the house. Ironically, it was this frivolity that ultimately contributed to his death. Had the staircase been narrower, Emmanuel may have been able to grab a railing to stop his fall. As it was, he broke his neck on the way down and died at the foot of the stairs as indifferent servants reportedly looked on.

Hux tries not to dwell on this as he climbs the stairs. He shines the flashlight down the left hallway, lingering on the doorway of Celia's room. The door is closed. Hux swallows imperceptibly.

Right as he lifts his foot to head down the hallway, a hollow slamming sound cracks through the silence somewhere behind him and he whirls around, pointing the light down the opposite hallway. He doesn't notice anything immediately, but it sounded like a door slamming shut. Before he can move, he hears creaking above his head. It's faint, but as he listens, the creaking resolves itself into muffled taps, crossing the ceiling above Hux's head. Footsteps.

Ignoring the goose bumps that ripple down his arms, Hux gets the distinct impression that whatever is in the house is teasing him. Well, if that's how they want to play, then fine. Hux turns toward the hallway where he'd heard the door slam. He's not afraid of a little game.

As he moves down the hall, he realizes that every door is open, except for one. He pauses in front of it, leveling the flashlight at the peeling wood. Consulting his mental map, Hux recognizes this room as the upstairs library. There is a larger, grander library downstairs that Emmanuel liked to show off to guests to make himself seem cultured. This smaller, more intimate one was supposedly mainly used by Celia. And the door had just slammed by itself.

Hux reaches for the knob, his hand looking pale and ghostly in the stark light of the flashlight. The scuffed and dented metal of the doorknob is freezing against his skin as he turns it, and a veritable blast of cold air hits him as he pushes the door open. He ignores it and steps fully inside, aiming the light around the room and taking in the empty, derelict shelves lining the walls. According to the witnesses, this room doesn't get much activity, so Hux hadn't paid much attention to it. He's only been in the room once before, on his initial tour. It's supposedly a quiet part of the house, but the freezing air and heavy atmosphere weighing on Hux's shoulders tell a different story.

He carefully walks further into the room, eyes scanning for movement, shivering slightly. The only sounds he can hear are his own breathing and the soft creak of the floorboards beneath his feet. His own breaths sound loud to him, rasping in his ear, echoing in the space almost obnoxiously, and he wills himself to calm down. The air is leaden, filling his lungs like water, and even with his limited sensitivity, Hux can feel something in the room with him. It's less of a certainty and more of a slight tickle on his consciousness. Like when someone is standing in a doorway watching you, and even though you can't see them, you can tell they're there.

Taking a deep breath, he opens his mouth. "Emmanuel?" he asks, voice small and muted in the oppressive darkness. Suddenly, the door creaks behind him and he whips around, breath catching, staring at it as it swings slightly on its hinges. Then his blood runs cold. Because, even though his breath had stuttered in his lungs, the rasping pervading the room hadn't paused.

A jolt races up Hux's spine and he freezes, listening in horror as the breathing somehow draws closer until it sounds like it's right over his shoulder. The first brush of air across his ear propels him out of the room as fast as he can go, breathing hard and shaking, ears ringing with breaths that weren't his own.

In the hallway, he practically runs from the library door, craning his head to keep it in view. Of course, that means he's not watching where he's going, and he almost screams when he slams right into something solid and warm and built like a bear.

Hands grab his wrists before Hux can wind up to punch whoever just scared the fucking daylights out of him and a familiar voice cuts off his violent cursing.

"Hux?"

Hux freezes. No fucking way. He maneuvers the flashlight until it's angled upwards, catching Kylo Ren across the face, making him wince. Good.

"Ren?" Hux asks incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that," Ren grunts, brushing the flashlight aside, but not releasing Hux's other wrist. "I really didn't think you'd be this stupid, but when I woke up and you weren't there--"

"Excuse me? Stupid?" Hux narrows his eyes. "I'm only picking up your slack, Ren. We have a _job_ to do, in case you've forgotten."

"You're not here to finish the investigation."

Hux blinks. "Yes, I am, Ren, I really don't think--"

"You don't have your camera, and the base equipment is all off." Ren leans forward, pulling Hux into him until they're eye-to-eye. "What are you doing here?"

Hux glares right back at him. "I don't see how that's any of your concern."

"You're injured, you moron!" Ren sounds exasperated and a bit hysterical.

Hux scoffs. "I'd hardly count a few bruises as a debilitating injury, Ren."

"Oh, for fuck's s--"

A huge crash behind Hux makes both of them jump, peering down the hallway in time to see all the doors along the walls slam shut, one by one, each door hurtling itself into its frame with a deafening wooden crack.

"Shit," Ren says vehemently, hand tightening around Hux's wrist. "We have to go."

Without waiting for Hux to respond, Ren takes off, dragging Hux behind him. Hux stumbles, struggling to keep up with Ren's enormous strides as he's pulled through the halls to the second-floor staircase.

"Ren, what the hell?" he hisses.

"We need to hide. I don't think there's anything upstairs." Ren yanks Hux along and Hux has no choice but to race up the stairs behind him.

The third floor is devoid of slamming doors, but Hux can't shake the memory of the footsteps above his head earlier as Kylo pulls him down a hall and into a room that looks like it used to be a washroom. A rusted tub stands to one side of the long room, eerie in the scant light from the window.

Kylo closes the door firmly before finally releasing Hux's wrist, the residual heat of his hand like a brand against Hux's skin.

"Do you really think a _door_ is going to stop a ghost?" Hus says snidely, folding his arms and leveling his gaze at Ren, who flashes him an annoyed glare.

"Shut up."

"Very mature."

"You _really_ shouldn't be making comments about my maturity," Kylo hisses. His silhouette is tense, backlit by the moonlight shining through the window. "I'm not the one who went to an active site _alone_."

Hux clenches his fist around the handle of the flashlight. "In case you've forgotten, I'm perfectly accustomed to working _alone_. Phasma and I have been doing this for years, and when one person has to stay at the base, the other one is always _alone_. I'm completely capable of taking care of things _alone_ , you overgrown toddler."

"You think you're so--"

"You don't know the first thing about me, Ren!" Hux bursts out, pushing up into Ren's space, forcing him to lean back. "Don't act like you do!"

"I know more than you think--"

"You know what Dr. Snoke told you," Hux bites out. "You know I started First Order investigations with Phasma in high school, you know my father is a famous paranormal researcher, and you know that I'm driven by my feelings of inadequacy and live in fear of not living up to my father, isn't that right?"

Ren shuts his mouth with a snap, staring at Hux with confusion written across his face, obvious even in the dark.

Hux smirks. "Yeah. You know all that. Because Snoke knows all that. Because I _allowed_ Snoke to know all that. You think I'd give someone as opportunistic as Dr. Snoke access to my real vulnerabilities? Please. I'm not an idiot. And you don't know shit about me." Hux backs off a bit, returning to his own space and continuing, a bit more sedately, "I suppose, on that front, we have something in common."

He holds Ren's gaze through the gloom, an odd, creaking silence growing between them. It's electric, suddenly, the air in the room crackling, spinning, orbiting around Ren's gleaming brown eyes. Hux has hated a lot of people in his life, it's practically his default state, but it's never felt like this before. Every time he speaks with Ren, he feels on the verge, edging toward something consuming and addictive.

The moment is broken, once again, by the bruises on Hux's legs whining for attention. Their mad dash to the bathroom has apparently caught up to them and Hux's legs decide that now is a good time to send shooting pains through his shin bones.

With a wince, Hux backs up until he hits a wall and slides to the floor, sighing.

"Shit," Ren whispers, kneeling awkwardly beside him. "I forgot about your legs. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine. I'm fine." Hux runs a hand through his hair, gazing dispassionately at the dim room. "You're right," he admits, the words dirt on his tongue. "I have been stupid. I'm not thinking straight."

Ren stares at him like he's grown a second head.

"Fuck you, Ren, I'm capable of admitting when I'm wrong."

Ren snorts, settling himself against the wall beside Hux. "Could have fooled me."

"It's not hard to fool you."

Ren slides a glare at Hux from the corner of his eye, but it's different from his normal glares. This one seems almost...playful. "Never thought I'd see the day you admitted I was right."

Hux rolls his eyes. "Neither did I." At Ren's smirk, Hux elbows him in the ribs. "Don't get cocky, you're never going to hear it again."

Ren actually _laughs_ at that, leaning away from Hux's bony elbow, and Hux is transfixed by the sound. Until another sound replaces it, a dull thump from somewhere outside the room.

Against his will, Hux jumps, head turning sharply toward the door.

"It's okay," Ren murmurs. "He's not out there."

Hux faces him, brow furrowed. "Emmanuel Marigold?"

"Yeah." Ren shifts uncomfortably. "I realized who it was when I got here just now. I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner."

A petty thrill rushes through Hux at the knowledge that he, even without psychic powers, figured out who the malevolent presence of the Marigold Plantation was sooner than Kylo "I just know" Ren. Thorough research is always the answer.

Deciding to gloat later, Hux runs a slightly trembling hand through his hair, further displacing the already unruly strands.

"You usually keep it slicked back."

Hux shoots Ren a confused look and Ren flushes through the gloom.

"Your hair, I mean. It's usually back."

"Yes," Hux says slowly.

"But now it's not."

"Quite an astute observation."

Ren huffs an irritated-sounding breath. " _Why?_ "

That momentarily brings Hux up short. "Uh, I--" he clears his throat. "It's really humid here. Styling it is really hard when it gets curly like this. It's just easier not to." Hux wonders why Ren cares.

"I like it." Almost before the words are out, Ren snaps his mouth shut, eyes wide, but he said them, and Hux heard them, and now Hux is more confused than ever.

" _What?_ "

Probably realizing he can't get out of this, Ren visibly grits his teeth before speaking again. "Your hair. It looks...nice. Like this."

"My hair looks...nice."

"When it's down." Hux can see the blush glowing on Ren's cheeks. "I...like it this way. It's softer." Ren makes a small, abortive movement with his hand, as if he wants to reach out and touch Hux's tousled curls.

"Oh." Hux isn't sure what to say. He averts his eyes, mortified to feel a flush spreading over his own face, and cards a hand through his hair self-consciously. "Well. Putting it back is a bit tedious. Maybe. I'll leave it like this."

Ren stiffens beside him. "Wait, really?"

Cheeks burning, Hux refuses to meet his gaze. "Well, I've been thinking about it for a while anyway. Hair gel isn't very good for follicle health, after all, and it's just one more step in the morning," he babbles.

"Cool. That's...cool."

Hux pulls his knees to his chest nervously. "I'm glad you think it's cool, Ren."

A beat of silence passes, weighing heavy on Hux's shoulders as he struggles to understand _what the fuck just happened_.

Then, "Why do you call me that?" Ren asks quietly, voice almost hesitant.

"Call you what?"

"Ren."

"Because that's...your name."

"It's not my first name."

"Well, you don't call me by my first name."

"Well." Ren shifts awkwardly. "I don't know your first name."

"Good." Hux angles his body toward Ren. "Do you...want me to call you by your first name?"

Ren swallows visibly, and Hux's eyes are inexorably drawn to the movement beneath the skin of his neck. "Yeah. I think I'd like that better."

"Oh. Okay. Kylo." The word feels strange, new and unfamiliar on Hux's tongue, but not unpleasant. He likes the way his mouth fits around the syllables. "Kylo."

Kylo's eyes widen almost imperceptibly, staring at Hux with something akin to disbelief. Even sitting side-by-side, Kylo is still taller than him, and Hux finds himself tilting his head up hold his gaze evenly.

"Kylo."

Kylo parts his lips on a soft exhale, their faces close enough that Hux can feel the breath brush his skin. "You--"

Kylo's words are interrupted by a horrific creaking sound that vibrates the boards beneath them. Hux jerks away, scanning the room so frantically he almost misses the way Kylo tenses. Then suddenly the room is filled with an earsplitting crack that nearly drowns out Kylo's shout as the floor directly beneath him buckles and snaps, sending him plunging downward.

"Kylo!" Hux grabs the splintered edges of the new hole where Kylo had just been sitting, surrounded by the sound of snapping wood, peering desperately into the darkness below. He can barely make out the shape of another hole in the floor of the room underneath him. "Kylo!" he screams.

When he receives nothing but silence in reply, the creaking of the wood dying down, he curses violently and carefully pushes himself to his feet. The house clearly isn't as structurally stable as Maisy Winthrop said it was.

The walls groan around him, sounding unnervingly human, but Hux ignores it, sprinting out of the room and down the stairs. He heads for the grand staircase. If Kylo fell through the second floor too, then he's either on the first floor or he went all the way through into the basement. He could be lying there paralyzed from a spinal injury or impaled on a piece of broken wood. Dozens of horrible possibilities flit through Hux's head as he reaches the second floor landing. Then, he stumbles, laughter suddenly echoing all around him. He shines the flashlight around himself frantically, but there's no one there, just a deep, disembodied laugh ringing throughout the vast entrance hall.

"Emmanuel!" he screams into the emptiness. "What did you do to him?!"

The laughter continues unabated.

"What do you want?!"

As if in answer, Hux hears a door somewhere behind him slam open and the laughter cuts off abruptly. Whirling around, he notices Celia's door swinging on its hinges.

He's done with this nonsense. It's time to go straight to the source.

The very floor seems to be warping under his feet as he runs down the hall, and he practically throws himself through the doorway to Celia's room, letting the door swing wildly and bang into the wall behind him as he dashes across the sitting room and bursts into the bedroom.

"Emmanuel!" he shouts. "That's enough!"

The air in the room is cold and roiling like a storm wind. Hux finds himself buffeted to the side and he struggles to maintain his balance.

"Stop this! There's nothing here for you anymore! Celia is--" Hux breaks off on a gasp as the air warms suddenly. Then, he feels the familiar sensation of fingers creeping along his skin, tracing the hand holding his flashlight. A hand encloses his wrist and Hux can almost feel the warmth of living flesh against his own, soaking into his bones. A swoop of sensation settles low in his gut.

"C-Celia?"

Warm air brushes through his hair and it's as if the room grows fractionally brighter. Then the grip on his hand tightens like a vice, grinding his bones together painfully as the temperature plummets. The beam of Hux's flashlight flickers and dies, plunging the room into suffocating darkness and silence, only broken by his own short, rapid breaths.

"Fuck." He wrenches his arm free of the invisible grip, dropping the flashlight, and spins around, racing for the door. He staggers as the room shakes around him, the glass in the windows rattling ominously, but he doesn't stop, tripping out of the room. He runs down the hall, pursued by loud knocking sounds from the walls around him, and makes it to the landing in a dead sprint.

Just as he reaches the stairs, a freezing sensation brings him up short, and he turns in time to see a dark figure swirl into existence right behind him. "Holy sh--"

Then there's two hard points of pressure on his chest, like palms pressed against his sternum, shoving him backwards, and he's falling, air rushing past him, the sounds of footsteps and screaming echoing around him as he hurtles toward the ground--

But suddenly there are arms around him, holding him securely against something solid and warm, and the world is spinning, spiraling downward, punctuated by harsh thuds that jolt him to his core and rattle his thoughts until his head is nothing but pained static. And then it stops, but everything is still spinning, and he can feel the floor against his back, but it's like being on the deck of a ship: it pitches and rolls beneath him and he's too dizzy to open his eyes, too dizzy to _think_ \--

"Hux? Hux!"

Someone is calling his name. Fingers lightly tap his face but he can't ground himself long enough to respond, to find his way out of the spinning darkness--

"Emmanuel, you bastard, that's enough!"

That's Kylo's voice, right above him. Hux supposes that means he didn't snap his spine when he fell through the floor. Which is good.

"Why are you doing this?!" Kylo yells, and the house moans loudly around them, as if in response. "That's not a fucking answer, you dick!"

Hux forces his eyes open, blinking through the darkness, and it takes him a moment of processing to realize that Kylo's voice is coming from above him because Kylo is above him, supporting himself on his elbows, keeping Hux caged with his body.

"Why not me?" Kylo is shouting, head tilted up, away, glaring into the shadows of the entrance hall. "He can't even see you, why did you attack him and not me?!"

The house whimpers and sighs and Hux drags his hand up to wrap it around Kylo's wrist. Kylo's attention snaps down and fixes in him.

"Hux! Thank god. I was afraid you hit your head."

"I think I probably did," Hux mumbles, wincing as the floor gives a vicious tilt. "Why are you on top of me?"

"Oh, uh--"

The house shrieks, cutting Kylo off, then gives way to another sound: splintering wood.

Kylo tenses. "What is--"

The sound crescendos into an ear-splitting crack and Hux realizes what's happening.

"Get down!" he yells, reaching up and pulling Kylo's head down, covering it with his arms. One of Kylo's big hands cups Hux's own head as wood snaps around them. Chunks of the ceiling rain down, striking the floor nearby hard enough to vibrate the floorboards and send dust erupting into the air.

When the barrage of noise and crashing wood dies down, Kylo stirs, raising himself up a bit.

"What the fuck, Emmanuel!"

"Kylo, we have to leave, he's going to bring the whole house down on us."

The house shrieks.

"Shit," Kylo hisses, scrambling to his feet and yanking Hux up alongside him.

Hux sways slightly, grabbing Kylo's arm. Another air-rending groan keeps them from moving, however, and a quiet whisper floating on the air has Kylo tugging Hux behind him, as though he can block an incorporeal being with his physical body.

"Enough!" Kylo yells. "Come out, you fucking coward! Face me!"

The whisper burbles and rasps like it's laughing.

"Why has he been avoiding me?" Kylo grits out, casting his eyes around the entrance hall. "This has never happened before. Usually they're falling over themselves to get a piece of me."

"Oh, how humble." Hux barely suppresses a flinch as more wood shifts and snaps around them.

"I'm serious though. I know he hates me, why isn't he coming after me?"

"He is coming after you," Hux says. "He's just doing it by going after me."

"What?"

Hux sighs. "I spoke to a historian. Long story short, Emmanuel Marigold thinks that the best way to punish someone is to kill the people they love."

"Oh." Kylo pauses. "Then why--"

"I don't know!" The creaking wood settles for a second and Hux grabs Kylo's wrist, pulling him toward the door. "I don't get it, but I know that he's not going to stop until he crushes me under this house, so we need to--"

Right on cue, a huge chunk of ceiling hits the floor right in front of them and they stumble, Kylo grabbing Hux to steady him.

"He's here," Kylo mutters in his ear. "And he's angry. He's so mad and _hateful_ , I don't know--"

"His wife had a baby with a slave and he's a petty, possessive son-of-a-bitch," Hux says matter-of-factly. "That's why."

Kylo goes rigid behind him. "It's not like that!" he yells to the room, releasing Hux and stalking across the floor. Hux is abruptly very aware of how frigid the air has become. "It's not the same! I barely even know him." Kylo indicates to Hux, staring off into the shadows of the entrance hall, brow drawn with fury.

"What?" Hux can't help but interject, never mind the ominous groaning of the house or the debris littering the ground already. "We've been traveling together for nearly four months! I know we haven't been the closest of friends but surely--"

"Yeah, well, you told me earlier that everything I knew about you was a lie, so where exactly does that leave us?" Kylo never could resist an opportunity to argue. Hux reasons that he's a lot like him in that way.

"Not _everything_ , for god's sake, just that half-baked psychological swill I feed to Dr. Snoke to keep him occupied. I've never lied to you, Kylo."

At that, Kylo turns to face him, and even in the dark, Hux feels pierced through by his eyes. "Really?" Even from across the room, that one word feels so small and fragile that Hux finds himself stepping forward without even realizing it.

The house _growls_ and Hux freezes, wary of falling ceiling chunks.

"Hux, he's really mad, you've gotta go!" Kylo shouts.

To emphasis his point, the floorboards beneath their feet suddenly start twisting and bucking. Hux flings his arms out to steady himself. He's never seen a physical location react to spiritual energy this violently before. He really wishes he'd thought to bring his camcorder.

"Hux, go!"

"Fine! Fine!" But Hux only makes it a few steps before he realizes that Kylo isn't moving. "Um, the house is crumbling around our ears, Kylo, now is the time to hustle!"

"I'm keeping him busy! Just go!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake--" Hux charges across the room as quickly as he can with the floor actively fighting him and grabs Kylo's wrist. "This isn't a movie, you're not a hero, and we don't have time to waste on your dramatics!"

Kylo's eyes widen in a comically shocked expression and he allows himself to be dragged across the entrance hall. Just as they reach the door, the house screams behind them, a horrible amalgamation of shrieking wood and human anguish, and that must snap Kylo out of it because suddenly it's him dragging Hux, pulling him through the door and down the steps and across the lawn as the opulent Marigold Plantation Great House caves in on itself with a cacophony of horrific grinding noises and one disconcertingly human bellow.

The earth shakes beneath them as they pull up short, turning to stare back in horror as the house consumes itself. Hux shields his eyes against the blast of dust that rushes past them and Kylo stares openly at the destruction, black hair whipping around his face in the wind.

When the commotion finally dies down, leaving in its wake an odd, dry silence, Hux lowers his arm, breathing hard, and looks at Kylo, who is shaking his head slightly.

"He pulled the whole house down," Kylo whispers hoarsely.

"Is he...gone?" Hux ventures.

Kylo swallows, eyes still distant. "Yeah. He was bound to the structure. And now that it's destroyed...." he huffs, sounding disbelieving. "Stupid bastard."

Hux doesn't have anything to say to that. Instead he finds his attention drawn to where Kylo is still grasping his wrist. Kylo looks down as well.

"Oh." He drops Hux's arm. "Sorry."

Hux rubs his wrist absently. "Seems like you've done nothing but yank me around since we got here."

"Maybe if you weren't always wandering into trouble, I wouldn't have to."

Rolling his eyes, Hux fights down the smile threatening to curve his mouth. He glances back at the pile of rubble that used to be Marigold Plantation's Great House. "I can honestly say I wasn't expecting this."

"Yeah. I guess this means Maisy Winthrop's construction schedule is fucked."

Anything Hux could have said in response to that cheeky comment and Kylo's infuriating smirk is drowned out by the rumble of _The Finalizer_ pulling up the drive and grinding to a halt right beside them. The door swings open, revealing an incredibly angry Phasma.

Hux and Kylo exchange looks that can only mean one thing: _fuck_.

\---

Hux heaves what feels like his millionth sigh of the day as he hangs up and leans back. He's been on and off the phone all day, with Maisy Winthrop, with lawyers, with the mayor. Fortunately, a cursory inspection of the foundation revealed several major structural flaws that had somehow been missed the first time, structural flaws that could easily lead to total collapse, so no one is pinning the blame on Hux or First Order Investigations, but the fact remains that yesterday, there was a building, and, today, there isn't.

His final phone call had been to Snoke, who seemed oddly ambivalent about the fact that his grad students destroyed a decades-old mansion, not to mention the loss of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. He was primarily interested in Kylo's performance. Hux had given him surface details only, unsure how much Kylo wanted him to reveal, but Snoke had seemed satisfied nevertheless. His final instructions had been to return to the university to replace their equipment and report to him.

Hux is in the middle of rubbing his temples and reflecting on how he hasn't slept in nearly two whole days when the RV opens and Kylo spills inside.

Seeing Kylo or Phasma in the RV always borders on the absurd. Both fill the space awkwardly, not tall enough to brush their heads on the ceiling but not short enough to pass through doorways without hitting their foreheads. Phasma maneuvers gracefully and with the ease of someone who's used to living in an RV. Kylo...manages. He doesn't crack his head against the doorframes and cabinets nearly as much as he used to, but his broad shoulders provide an added obstacle. Generally, Hus resents them both for daring to be taller than him, but at least he doesn't have to hunch over in the shower to stay under the spray.

Kylo steers his enormous frame over to the workstation and drops into the chair beside Hux, asking, on a rough exhale, "What's the plan, Captain?"

Hux brings a hand to his stiff neck, trying to rub some of the tension away. "I settled everything with Mrs. Winthrop. She actually sounded a bit relieved. And Dr. Snoke wants us to go back to the university to see him and replace the equipment." He winces. "I can't believe I just _left_ everything in the house. I should have packed up camp when I got the memory cards."

"Well, you didn't know the house was going to collapse." Kylo shrugs, like it's no big deal.

"That's not the point." Hux shoots him a glare. "I know it's dangerous to leave the equipment unattended and I did it anyway." He rubs his eyes again and continues, under his breath, "I did a lot of things I shouldn't have." 

"Can't argue with that."

"Thanks for the support."

"No problem." Kylo's tone is impertinent , but one of his hands has found its way hesitantly to Hux's knee, just resting there, and Hux can't help but take comfort in the solid weight of it.

The animosity between him and Kylo shifted at some point during the night, so much so that Kylo's presence beside him isn't unwelcome now, as they sit together in the sunlit cabin of _The Finalizer_.

Hux glances at Kylo and finds him looking back, expression unreadable. Maybe it's the exhaustion, or the lingering shock from falling down the stairs, but Hux can feel the air around them buzzing, humming. It's the same hum he always feels around Kylo, a singing vibration, the trembling of a piano wire just after it's plucked, but now it feels sweeter, their discordant melodies finally falling into harmony.

Then Kylo blinks, moves his hand, and the moment returns to reality.

Hux clears his throat. "Where's Phasma?"

A loud _bang_ sounds nearby and the RV shakes slightly as the cargo bay is slammed shut outside.

"Packing."

Hux sighs, rubbing his eyes. "She's not happy."

"Nope."

"We're never going to hear the end of this."

"Probably not."

Hux smiles slightly and catches Kylo's gaze again. Kylo smiles back, mouth twisting upward and making his crooked face look even more crooked.

"Don't think this means I believe all of your magic nonsense," Hux says.

Kylo lets out a startled laugh. "Wouldn't dream of it."

And Hux most certainly isn't struck by how young Kylo sounds when he laughs, how handsome his crooked face really is, and how loud his own heart suddenly sounds in his ears, because that would be completely irrational.

Rational people don't fall in love with jumped-up, unbalanced mediums. And Armitage Alexis Hux is a rational person.

Or, at least, he was.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said, this is episode 1. I have so much more planned for this au and I'm super excited to share it with you guys.
> 
> Come bug me on tumblr!


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